Magic-Users have a few well known problems when played in AD&D. Since I play a lot of one shots, I've added a few house rules in order to allow players to have fun with Magic-Users while trying not to unbalance the class in relation to the other classes.
Hit Die, level progression, spell progression, spells per day, weapon restrictions, armor restrictions, weapon proficiencies, spells per day remain the same. A magic-user must purchase any spell components necessary for spells he or she may want to cast.
I'm not a fan of Vancian magic but I understand the need in gamist terms, so here's where my house rules come into play. A magic users "spells per day" ability now refers to spells "memorized" per day. They now recover their spells at a rate much faster than in the book, where recovering a single spell of 1st level will require 1 full day of rest. Instead, for every 1 hour (6 turns), the magic-user will recover a 1st level spell. For every 2 hours, they will recover a 2nd level spell, and so on.. To change the specific spells they have memorized for the day, the magic-user must take a day's rest.
Scrolls and even the spellbook can now function differently. Scrolls can be seen as a physical analogue to spell memorization. Creating a spell scroll inscribes the magic words onto a physical form in the same way that memorizing a spell creates the magic in the magic-users' mind. A magic-user can then read any spell inscribed on a scroll, but in doing so the magic words are burned off the scroll and it is lost. Rules for creating scrolls are in the DMG, and remain unchanged. The spellbook, now, can be in a pinch used as a list of scrolls. If the magic-user does not have a certain spell prepared, he or she can read it straight out of the spellbook, but doing so burns the spell out of the book and it is lost. Procedures for copying spells into the spellbook remain unchanged.
While this will instantly make a magic-user far more powerful for one
combat every six turns, I think they make up for it with their fragility
and lack of options outside of magic. It's not quite the cantrip solution that is presented in Unearthed Arcana, bu neither does it replace the base AD&D system with something completely different like At-Will, Encounter, and Daily powers. And, hopefully, this will also put an end to the 5 minute work day.
The Quarterstaff is the most overlooked AD&D weapon. Magic-Users can wield it, and its free. They don't have to be dagger slaves.
This is how I tend to run it. In my games, the limit on an MUs power is not 'spells per day', which mostly just makes the party conservative and prone to stopping to recover once the MUs have shot their load. Instead, you limit them by how much they can keep memorized simultaneously (so spells become a per-encounter resource, rather than per-day), and then require re-memorizing spells to be loud, take a matter of turns and risk attracting random encounters; it means there's a choice to be made about whether to push on, pause and risk encounters to re-memorize, or retreat. This way you see players retreating less, I find.
ReplyDeleteDo you treat clerics recovering spells in the same way?
Wow I didn’t see this comment until much later
DeleteBut yes, I see no meaningful difference between a Cleric’s spells and a Magic-User’s. In fact, I consider the Cleric’s “holy book” to be the equivalent of the Magic User’s spellbook.